


And they were roommates

by qxzenith



Category: Macdonald Hall - Gordon Korman
Genre: Bruno and Boots - Freeform, M/M, Mutual Longing, Mutual Pining, all the pining, alternating pov, and they were ROOMMATES, aspec boots, implied homophobia in bruno's past, macdonald hall, some internalized homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:49:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24282367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qxzenith/pseuds/qxzenith
Summary: Six moments bringing Bruno and Boots from the beginning of their years at Macdonald Hall to the end.There are 3 residents in Room 306: Bruno, Boots, and the massive wall of sexual tension and unspoken pining that's taken up residence between them.
Relationships: Boots O'Neal/Bruno Walton
Comments: 3
Kudos: 26





	And they were roommates

“I don’t believe it,” Bruno Walton said, when he met his new roommate.

Macdonald Hall was supposed to be his safe haven. He’d researched the place, already fallen in love with its grounds and its history, badgered his parents and convinced them that this was the best place for him after the fiasco that was last year; it was going to be _his_.

And, okay, maybe it was naive, or even wilfully ignorant of him to think that the best place to go, after all that, was an all-boys boarding school, but he had never imagined that his roommate, the one person he would be unable to escape from for four years, would be this, this...

This _temptation_.

“What?” New Roommate threw his hands up in the air, looking quizzical and mildly hurt and unfairly handsome. He was built – not bodybuilder-bulky, but enough that Bruno could see big enough muscles through his tee – and he had the perfect jock dirty-blond, slightly tousled hair to match, framing blue-grey eyes that were just a shade brighter than Bruno’s mood was shaping up to be.

“Look at you,” Bruno said, gesturing at the whole package, and then, because he couldn’t stop himself from running at the mouth but he _could_ , at least, change what he was going to say for self-preservation purposes, went on, “picture-perfect legacy jock roommate that I get stuck with. I bet your father and grandfather and so on all went to the Hall, too, didn’t they?”

“Yeah, but is that a bad thin-- Hey, what are you doing?”

The roommate turned to follow as Bruno opened his suitcase uninvited, searching for something else to front with. And something to draw his own sightline away from his roommate’s lips. “ _Look_ at this! All these button-down shirts – did your mother choose your wardrobe? Ah, yes, of course she did; they’re all labelled. ‘Melvin P. O’Neal.’”

“Hey!” Melvin P. O’Neal snatched his suitcase back from Bruno.

He was fast, too. Well, he would be. With a strong, athletic build like that. And that jaw. “I can’t believe I’m stuck with a, a, a _Melvin_. I bet she’s always done that. I bet when you were a baby, you had little baby boots, all labelled ‘Melvin P. O’Neal.’ Just in case.”

"Look." Melvin P. O’Neal pointed a finger at Bruno. “How about you lay off, and we can start fresh? Just this once.”

Bruno turned away in apparent disgust. “Whatever you say, Boots.”

They were best friends by the end of the week.

That didn’t make it any easier.

*

When you’re saddled with a name like Melvin, you learn pretty quickly not to make waves. You learn how to protect yourself: be good at sports, go with the flow, don’t make enemies. Certainly don’t argue when your parents decide to send you to the same boarding school every man in your family’s attended; after all, that’s your best chance of not being the only one with an awful and archaic name in high school. Maybe in a place like that, it won’t be so bad.

So you go along with it, but instead, you’re saddled, on top of the name Melvin, with Bruno Walton for a roommate.

And you can figure two things out pretty quickly in the first five minutes of meeting this kid.

First, Bruno Walton is crazy.

And second, he hates your guts.

You only feel a little bit terrible about sizing him up on that first meeting, thinking, _Well, I’m bigger than he is. If he gives me too much of a hard time, I can make sure it’s not worth his while to keep it up._

You think, it will be like sharing a room with Edward again. And you survived that. For more than four years, even.

It just won’t be very much fun.

You will turn out to only have been right about your first conclusion.

*

Boots had never really thought about the word “gay.” It wasn’t in his lexicon.

Oh, he knew what it _meant_. And he’d threatened to knock Edward’s lights out if he said “That’s so gay” one more time about something he didn’t like, but, well, that was just the philologist in him, despairing at his brother’s underdeveloped vocabulary.

Other than quibbling with his obnoxious brother’s diction, it had never occurred to him to consider the word’s relevance in his own life.

Because, obviously, he wasn’t gay. He had no problem being in a locker room with other guys, changing in and out of swimsuits together. There was nothing weird about it, no sudden urges, nothing. And, hell, he didn’t have a problem sharing a room with Bruno, and they’d been briefly naked in each other’s company plenty of times, getting in or out of pyjamas or showers.

So he wasn’t _gay_.

He just – wanted Bruno to be happy. No, he wanted to _make_ Bruno happy. He’d go along with any stupid, impulsive, harebrained scheme to keep the fire in those dark eyes and the light in that wicked, expressive mouth.

He wanted, sometimes, to his own horror and certainly against his better judgement, to come up with and execute his own stupid, impulsive, harebrained schemes, for the sole purpose of filling Bruno Walton with delight.

But, well, that was Bruno, right? Everyone went along with Bruno’s plans, sooner or later. He had charisma; and, more than that, he had _character_. Everyone liked Bruno; so Boots could hardly be blamed for liking him, too.

And so what if sometimes he imagined what it would be like to just close the space between them and kiss Bruno squarely on the lips? Bruno talked a lot, that was all; and he was fantasizing about shutting him up, and putting that incredible mouth of his to a different use.

*

Bruno’s fantasies were filthier.

He was more creative with potential alternate uses for their mouths, for one thing. And hands. And-- well, once he started thinking about Boots’ body, his thoughts really got away from him too quickly to pin down to a list of “potential alternate uses.”

And there really was no getting away from them, especially once the Hall got a pool. After all, did they expect him to _not_ watch the swim team practice? Someone had to show school spirit!

And the beautiful thing about being best friends with Boots, about being Bruno and Boots (strike that; there were enough beautiful things about being Bruno and Boots for him to write an essay long enough to satisfy the Fish and still have more material left over) – but one of the beautiful things about being Bruno and Boots, and being in love with Boots, was that no one questioned it. Sure, he was the only non-swimmer always tagging along with the Macdonald Hall swim team, but, everyone pointed out, he was Bruno, and Boots was on the team, and those two were inseparable.

It was hiding in plain sight. He felt like he was getting away with murder.

He felt like he was getting away with watching his beautiful best friend cut through the water with powerful strokes, water sluicing off the muscles of his practically-naked body. He felt like his mouth went dry at the sight.

And really, he was glad that he didn’t know how to swim, not only because the view was much better as a spectator, but because it meant he could also indulge in fantasies of Boots saving him from drowning – in fantasies where Boots could save him, without his own mind objecting that Bruno Walton could generally save himself just fine, thank you very much.

Because it was true, usually he preferred to be right at the head of the charge. But he also wanted to imagine Boots’ strong arms around him, playing the hero for once.

*

“I’m not gay.”

The words ripped out of Boots in response to the situation, and they were the wrong words, and he knew it immediately, regretted it immediately, and it was too late.

“Yeah?” Bruno said, and Boots could already see him turning in on himself, angry and impotent and hurt.

He didn’t even lash out, didn’t snipe at him with words or give that set of his jaw that promised an onslaught of pranks and plots, just walked out the door of room 306, quieter than Bruno Walton ever was.

It was the worst week of their lives. Of his life, at least. There was no line down the middle of the room, this time; there wasn’t enough effort even for that. No ostentatious not-talking-to-him routines in the cafeteria; just dull, listless responses when called for.

He felt like a murderer.

He felt like worse than a murderer.

*

“I didn’t know,” Boots said, standing in the middle of room 306 like he didn’t know where to put himself, when the tension had gotten so bad that they both were suffocating.

Bruno’s eyes flicked up from where he was reading listlessly on his bed. Was he talking about Bruno? What didn’t he know? And if he was talking about the whole business right before the Hall, who had told him?

Curiosity cut with anxiety got the better of him, and he stood, shoving the book back under his blanket. “You _don’t_ know,” he snapped. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“No – I mean, yeah, maybe. But I meant me. I didn’t know about _me_ , okay?” Boots swallowed. “I’m an idiot. And I shouldn’t have said it when I didn’t know what I was talking about. But I’m talking about me.”

Bruno’s eyes narrowed. He folded his arms across his chest. “Go on.”

Boots’ mouth quirked up at the corner; he couldn’t help appreciate how well this shade of intrigued anger suited Bruno, even when it was directed at him. “I didn’t _know_ ,” he said again, pleading this time. “I wasn’t thinking about it. I was trying not to think about it, because, you know, why mess up a good thing when eventually, probably, we’ll both start thinking about girls--” Bruno snorted, then raised an eyebrow when Boots paused, as if to say, again, _go on_. Boots ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know, Bruno! We’ve lived together for four years. Thinking about you all the time is _normal_ , because you’re the most important thing in my life, so I didn’t--”

And then he stopped talking, not because he had run out of nervous words to fill the room with, but because Bruno’s mouth was in the way, Bruno was kissing him, his hands braced on Boots’ shoulders to overcome their height difference, and he had just long enough to think, leave it to Bruno to beat him to shutting the other one up with a kiss, after all the time he had spent thinking about it, and then he really wasn’t thinking anything at all.


End file.
